


The Mutation Theory

by SpellsOfScarlet



Series: We’ll Do That Together, Too [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Divergence tho, Fluff, Fox - Freeform, Multi, Powerful Wanda Maximoff, Whump, X-Men and the Avengers fighting togetherrrr, looking at u, obviously, pretty cool, wish we could see that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2020-08-10 00:16:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellsOfScarlet/pseuds/SpellsOfScarlet
Summary: Buried within her memory,  there’s a large, grey house, sat proudly upon immaculate grounds. Behind its walls, there are individuals who harness abilities of every imaginable variety...It’s a long shot- it’s a pinprick of a shot, buried in an endless, shifting sea. But it’s the only shot she has.She can’t live in a world where he doesn’t.Or,5 Times the X-Men Help Wanda (+ the 1 Time she Returns the Favour)





	1. I: The Closest of Calls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HereComesTheSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComesTheSun/gifts).
**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oof ouch pietro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Here goes my first prompt fill, or at least, the first part (Oops)- based on Herecomesthesun’s amazing idea! If you want to leave me an idea to ruin, I’m collecting them on my overwork “We’ll Do that Together, Too” :)

1\. _Pietro_.

Pain. 

That’s the single factor Wanda can comprehend. It’s pure, unbridled agony- the splicing, unimaginable pain of twenty-two bullets lodged within flesh and sinew, and the horrific sensation of her baby brother’s life seeping between her fingers like sand. 

She’s attuned to souls; Pietro’s is fading rapidly. Suddenly. 

She screams, she thinks. 

It’s a horrific, guttural thing, torn from her lungs: it’s the piercing screech of a wounded animal, and the world is swallowed in a surge of blinding red energy as it’s expelled with the force of an atom bomb. 

_ “ Wanda? ” _

_ “ KID? ” _

_ “ What’s happening? Is everything- “ _

Time is ticking. 

In a lurid flash, her hands ignite, and she’s soaring upwards. 

_ “ Someone get to Maximoff, NOW! ” _

Up, and up she goes, crimson electricity cracking like a whip: she’s terror, and panic, and desperation all wound up in a lashing, sparking ball of blazing red. Below, the entirety of the landscape is blurry and nonsensical, but he’s clear as day. A beacon, against the dark. 

_Pietro_ , her baby brother, her-

She slams into the ground with such a force that the aftershock is visible, and she feels the brittle earth give way beneath her boots. 

He’s right there. 

For a second, Wanda is paralysed. 

She doesn’t catch proper sight of Pietro at first, but the stench of copper in the air is so thick and pungent that she has to repress a gag. Sprawled over him, in the dust, there’s Clint, and his face crumples when he meets her wild eyes. His trembling hands are stained red. 

Her face twists; she chokes back a sob, and forces stiff, jerking steps forward, as if her mind is trying in some far away manner to keep her from seeing-

Oh,  _god_ . 

In another blinding flash, her magic shoves Clint aside; Wanda’s knees throw out, and she’s clawing at dirt. She’s witnessed this exact scenario often, in her frequent and unspeakably twisted nightmares. Only now, the image isn’t warped and grainy. The horrors play in high definition. 

For all that Wanda’s eyes see, her mind short-circuits and registers blank...

Pietro is...  _broken_ . Mangled. There isn’t an inch of him not soaked in hot, sticky blood, and the flesh of his torso is punctured and torn like a slab of meat which has met the butcher. His striking eyes are open, pupils blown, but they don’t focus on anything at all. 

No. 

_No_ . 

Time is ticking, the sand is falling...

and Wanda only sees red. 

_“Hey, hey,”_

_“Kid, c’mere, let me see-“_

Beneath this outwards projection of mania, there’s some semblance of a rational thought process in Wanda’s subconscious mind. All anyone sees at the present, however, is that the witch explodes in an uncontrollable cloud of red static, and shoots upwards, with her dying brother cradled in her arms.

The frantic shouts of her team dwindle in the dust-scattered air before they ever make it to her ears. 

Flying, staving off a scream, concentrating,  _thinking_ \- all of this, and she’s still in shock. Currently, Wanda’s brain is like a sieve, and she only manages to grasp hold of certain thoughts before they slip away completely. 

Of bullets and gun shot wounds, Wanda is far too aware of the steep statistics: she’s seen them play out in real time since the age of eleven. The two of them, however, have become something more than human- she’s  _flying_ , for God’s sake- and she can visibly see the life-energy that’s still pulsing weakly in Pietro now. If she can read minds, and Pietro can outrun waves of ultra violet light, what’s so ridiculous about a miracle recovery right now?

( _Her hands are wet with his trickling blood- it’s warm, and-_) 

It’s obvious to anyone that he needs a doctor, or some variety of healer, but their possibilities are impossibly narrow. 

The Avengers have Cho back at the compound, but she’s meticulously clinical and scientific, and she’s sure to write him off immediately. Even then- forgoing all of these technicalities, wasn’t she seriously injured? That feels right, somehow, but it’s hard to clearly recall so when Wanda’s world is burning. 

Given the opportunity and some horrific abomination of a stolen concoction, Hydra might well have attempted to revive their pet project. However, they’re all but eradicated- stamped out of their dark corners- and she’s not really sure she wants Pietro to live at all if it’s back in that cell. 

Then again, If Wanda drags her brother to a standard surgeons unit, she’s already digging his grave. 

She knows, inherently, that needs something more than science. It’s a known truth, to Wanda, that science is limited harshly by its fundamental rules- according to the rules, her brother should be too far gone.( _She focuses intently on the light of his pulse, breathing in time with each flicker_ _._)

Therefore, she needs something absolutely nonsensical: something that blurs the line between all that’s possible, and is so strange and fantastical that it just might work...

Magic.

She needs  _magic_ . 

Buried within her memory there’s a large, grey house, with an intricate walled garden; its walls hold magical powers of every imaginable variety...

It’s a long shot- it’s a pinprick of a shot, buried in an endless, shifting sea. But it’s the only shot she has. 

She can’t live in a world where he doesn’t. 

Soaring through the air, Wanda is weightless. Despite the numbness in her arms, in her entire being, the body that she holds is decidedly not. She never once looks down, but the pressure is enough of a constant reminder of the stakes at hand. As such, the journey takes an age and a second all at once; she doesn’t know at all where she’s going, and yet it seems she finds it in a matter of moments. 

Suddenly, there’s fountains, and an immaculate green lawn. There’s a mansion, and in the top floor...

_Touchdown_ . 

An explosion of agonising pain ripples through Wanda again, but this time its entirely self-inflicted. It doesn’t matter, though. As she crashes, her magic swells to protect Pietro. Nothing else matters. 

Understandably disoriented, Wanda notes her surroundings: she’s standing on a soft, ornamental rug; there’s an enormous, bloodied jagged pile of glass at her feet,  _in_ her feet, and there’s quite the cool breeze, wherein the window used to reside. And, at the far side of the room, there he is. 

Startled quite appropriately by her sudden...  _entrance_ , the man appears to be levitating a table like a shield; the poor thing is speared by huge fragments of window pane, which certainly would’ve impaled the man’s skull if his coffee table hadn’t bared such a sacrifice. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t a second that Wanda’s able to spare on half-hashed apologies, or sweet formalities: she needs his intervention, and she needs it immediately. 

She notices, as she steps forward, that the look on his face is quite remarkably tame, to say a human firework has just smashed through his window from the sky, with a limp, blood-soaked body. She’s met this man once before back when they’d attempted to recruit her, and she knows immediately from his mind- despite his obvious familiarity with telepathy- that it really is him. Erik.  _Magneto_ . 

“ Help me! ” she screeches, though she doesn’t mean at all to sound the way she does. She intends to be strong and calm, but then she opens her mouth and everything she’s holding back comes spilling uncontrollably outwards. Violent red electricity snaps ferociously with her words, and a flicker of something close to fear flashes across Erik’s face. 

Because, at last, the panic’s setting in, soaking through, no matter how she pushes it away, and it’s turning her magic to a lawless frenzy. It’s dangerous- Wanda needs desperately to control it, she’s well aware- but the light in Pietro is growing dimmer by the second, and she’s either going to accidentally turn the world to ash with a misplaced thought, or she’s going to be sick. 

Despite all of this, Erik doesn’t actually speak, or make to move. He doesn’t react very evidently at all, as if her borderline hysteria, or the blazing scarlet magic, or the mangled, broken person in her arms is something that he sees everyday. 

(It might be shock- that isn’t illogical. But after everything that she knows Erik Lehnsherr has witnessed in his time...)

Normally, Wanda would realise instantly that he is in fact stalling. Waiting, silently... for a back up that can immobilise threats instantly. In this state, and this second, however, the coppery, thick stench of tainted blood is inescapable, and for the second time, Charles Xavier manages to catch her entirely by surprise. 

_ **Wanda** _

She jolts, as if struck by lightning. 

_ **Everything will be alright, dear** _

The room  _swims_ : the stabbing, heightened sensation of a telepath entering her own armoured mind is something incredibly invasive. It startles Wanda quite seriously, for a fleeting moment. 

Eventually, something calms enough within her to connect the blatant dots ( “_Hello,” he said, with a smile, “I’m Charles. Some people call me Professor X.”_ ), which gives him a good second of contemplation before she manages to rag him right out of her mind, with an aggression that she doesn’t  _quite_ intend. 

At the far side, Erik seems to sense something, and falters; there’s a very tense, weighted silence before the doors at the back of the room swing open, and he’s there, Professor X in flesh and wheels. Immediately, Erik turns to meet him with a tangible relief, but the professor simply holds up a hand in answer. His other hand is rubbing his temple.

“Don’t worry,” he reassures Erik, which seems implausible when Wanda’s stood in the wreckage of an innocent bay window, coated head to toe in blood and sending off sparks like a firecracker. “I’ve seen inside her head,” he continues, grimacing. “She doesn’t mean any harm.”

“Are you sure that you shouldn’t incapacitateher, at the least? Look how unstable she is!”

“She’s  _scared_ .”

“She’s burning up!”

They’re wasting time. 

“Help me!” She says again, and the brilliant red that leaps from her skin enforce her desperate plea as a demand. 

There’s a quick look shared between the two men that she doesn’t attempt to decipher, but then they  _finally_ spring to action. Magneto hurries over, and Charles swiftly follows. At last, they seem to properly take in Pietro, and Charles looks up at Wanda with pure, immeasurable horror sprawled across his features. 

“What happened to him?” He whispers, and in place of intelligible reply, she simply blinks, then gives a little jerky nod. Wanda neither possesses the time, or the spirit, for a retelling of the last ten minutes, which he seems to understand immediately. Of course he does. 

She shows him. 

_Everything_ . 

Very hesitantly, Charles lifts his fingers, and Wanda clears her mind, pulling down her many psychic walls and barricades. She locks her knees, bracing, and tries not to send a thousand volts surging into his brain as a defence mechanism when her vision implodes. The ghost of cool fingers touch upon her forehead, and the world is pulled from out beneath her feet-

-“_Go,” she says, and Pietro frowns. He’s remarkably, brilliantly whole, and strong, and standing. _

_“I’m not leaving you,” he retorts stubbornly. Wanda rolls her eyes. _

_“I can deal with this myself!” she exclaims-_

_her eyes glow red in threatening, and his frown upturns with a cheeky grin and a warm chuckle. “They need you. So go!”_

_“I’m twelve minutes older than you, you know.”_

_She laughs. _

_And then he’s gone. _

_Gone. _

_In the distance, she hears the unmistakeable thud of bullets peppering concrete. She’s focusing on ripping and tearing apart robots as if they’re made of paper, and then-_

_Gone. _

_Suddenly, she jerks_ _forward, as if someone has yanked a cord in her mind. Ice floods her body, and the battle freezes around her. A horrific, sickening realisation seeps into her skin like a poison. She blinks, slowly..._

No...  No ...

_A deafening, consuming flash of red. _

_A piercing scream. _

_An agonising, fiery burning. _

_ More pain than she’s certain can be acknowledged- then she’s flying through dust, landing with an almighty crash, and her magic surges spectacularly. At last, she registers the scene, and something within her shrivels up and breaks away. The other half of her soul is battered, and broken, and bleeding, and his eyes are wide open, like a doll \-  _

The removal of Charle’s presence is pulling a knife from deep within a wound, and with it Wanda drops to her knees for the second time, trembling ferociously and gasping for air that doesn’t taste of metal. 

** _I’m sorry. I’m- I’m sorry_ **

“Erik,” Xavier gasps, breaking away from Wanda’s side, and his voice wavers as tears slide down his face in twin streams. He’s stricken: now sharing in the burden of Wanda’s unimaginable pain, and the intensity is more than any soul can bear. “The bullets. Remove them- we can’t waste a second.” And then, slightly stronger, “I’m going to call Elixir.”

_Elixir_ ... a medication, a shimmering potion, or a freaky mutant Doctor- it doesn’t matter in the slightest to Wanda, if it’s something that might be able to help. Besides, Magneto has joined her on the floorboards, and he’s trying to coax Pietro from the clutches of her magic. 

Exceedingly gently, she manages to place him on the floor, a few inches from her kneeling, and then she fixates on Erik. She’s properly shaking now, and the scarlet energy is growing even more erratic, as time passes in this place in its strange, staggered way. Although she’s seen Erik pluck ocean-liners from the sea with incredible ease, it takes a rather long time for him to get to work, now. 

Her vision has, through the promise of tears, become illegibly blurry, but she watches him raise both hands, tentatively. His brow creases, and he closes his eyes. His hands, too, tremble. 

Everything happens in one momentous instance. 

Suddenly, bullets dislodge from Pietro’s body with a sickening spray of blood- his life-force sputters, and she shrieks- Wanda feels the damage spike across her chest as if it’s her own, and her magic lurches outwards uncontrollably. She knows it’s wrong, knows more than anything that she needs to let him help- but her power feeds only on instinct, and he’s hurting her brother...

“ _Shit_ !”

“She needs to calm down!” Erik yells, his face screwed up. “I was almost there!” There’s no way that he can reach the remaining metal through Wanda’s impenetrable barrier, and there’s nothing she can do but stare at the scene in horror. Charles fires back almost immediately.

“I’m trying my best,” he grunts, “But this is like trying to overpower Jean!”

She can’t even feel him. She can’t even  _feel_ him... 

At this moment, the doors burst open, and a young boy- a student- is launchedinto the maddening chaos.His hair is an untamed, tangled mop atop his head, and his skin, it’s...

Bright, dazzling  _gold_ . 

She blinks. 

18-karats locks honey-coloured eyes with her; no matter how she shakes her head his image remains solid. And irrefutably gold. 

“-let go? Wanda?”

She tears herself away, feeling very much as if she’s caught in a trance. 

“Can you let go?”

Wanda frowns, and Charles tilts his head. 

“Erik needs to get the other bullets out. Can you let go, dear? He’s safe. You’re safe.”

Fully-fledged panic seems to resume with these words, though she recognises that he’s trying to bestow a calming influence when he speaks. Then, the golden boy is kneeling besides Erik, which throws her off the tracks, and she concentrates impossibly hard on drawing back her power, when she’s coming apart at the seams. 

After a whole lot of coaxing, close to all of the gleaming scarlet energy that’s crackling around her pulls back in to her body, and her eyes fizzle to a dull green, like the last embers of a fire. She slumps against a wall, and the only thing keeping her present is the sharp, stinging glass that’s cutting into the skin of her back. 

“-lost a lot of blood, so the main concern is closing the wounds, and then finding a pulse-“

A further five bullets shoot upwards into Magneto’s hand, and again Wanda’s instincts and the burning in her palms screams to  _Help, Protect, _ _Stop_.  Biting into the flesh of her tongue, she clenches her fists, and watches her brother jerk and twitch in a pool of his blood through a lens of hot, endless tears. 

“- now, Josh- Yes! That’s it-“

There’s a sharp clawing in her chest- the throbbing ache of which doesn’t subside in the least when soft yellow light spills from the golden boy’s palms, rolling over Pietro like a mist.  _ Help, Protect,  Stop _ \- it collects in iridescent pools where Pietro’s flesh is badly puckered and torn, and then melts, soaked into his body. 

Slowly but surely, in a way that should never be possible, tissue begins to knit itself back together. Blistered skin smooths, and dark, congealed blood fades to fresh pink skin.

It’s... magic. 

In the moment, she can’t quite appreciate the intricacies of the extraordinary phenomenon: her vision is unnaturally heightened and thorough, and she’s watching intently the light that’s  _inside_ Pietro. The one that pulses, with his heartbeat. The one, that after all of this struggle and trauma, is strengthening before her eyes. 

She’s still choking through ugly sobs, but she manages to blows out a long, harsh breath that she hadn’t known she’d held for so long. With this release, something dire and tense withdraws from the room, and both Charles and Erik seem to cease in their position of high-alert and awareness.

Tears fall in excess, and she makes no kind of attempt to try and hide or stop them. After a long, aching moment, she sees the golden kid slump backwards, his energy drained; that energy swirls in Pietro’s veins like stardust, cleaning out the last remaining threats of harm from his system. 

Wanda won’t quite let herself believe it. 

He’s  _okay_ . 

Crawling forward, finally, she hugs her brother to her chest, and feels his strong, thumping heartbeat as clear as the day outside; she fixates on the steady rise and fall of his chest, and runs her fingers compulsively through matted white hair. She clutches his head to her chest, and sobs. 

He isn’t going to die today. 

She doesn’t have to bear losing the last remaining part of her life that she truly cares about.

He’s going to pull through. 

_He’s going to pull through. _

Outside of her blissful bubble, Charles is murmuring softly to the unresponsive boy- Elixir, she realises- before Erik scoops him up, and carries him away as if he weighs nothing. The limp, dangling arms clutched in the man’s own strikes something deeply in Wanda, and though the golden boy isn’t dripping with blood, she cries all anew regardless. 

They’ll move Pietro somewhere more comfortable and clean soon, she knows. But for now, she cradles his head, relishing selfishly in the steady pulsing of his life-force, interconnected with her own.

Silently, the Professor sits close. He doesn’t speak- he doesn’t know her well enough, perhaps, for that level of intimacy in such a raw moment- but his presence is enough, and Wanda greatly appreciates his efforts. When at last she looks up, she’s sure that she finds a few new dark lines under his eyes, which are certainly the result of a crazed psionic mutant smashing through his property with her half-dead brother. She’ll have to apologise, for those. But, for now...

“Thank you,” she says, with a sincerity she wants him to be able to know, without having to read into her. All Charles does is smile, in that sincere, warm-hearted manner that makes her want to forget all of the misery she’s been struck with. 

It’s a thank you she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to say enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I’ll write something different, I promise...
> 
> Thankyou so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed whatever this first part turned out to be! I have all the parts planned, lots pre written, and I’m gonna try and get it allll finished very soon :)
> 
> Also, huge thanks to Herecomesthesun! I loved your idea, and I hope I didn’t mess it up too badly! 
> 
> *I know literally nothing about the X-Men, but I binge watched all the movies and I’m kinda in love kinda angry kinda very excited for the Disney Fox Deal- but I’m sorry about how much I’m going to get wrong through this entire work! 
> 
> **Comment anything, and like I said in the beginning notes, I’ll take more prompts. HMU! <3


	2. II: Sir, That’s My Emotional Support Mutant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pietro’s down for a while, what with his twenty-two bullet wound ordeal- which leaves Wanda startlingly alone, for the first time in a long while. She has the Avengers, obviously, but she’s stuck at this damn school for the foreseeable future. She just needs someone to talk to- which is where 100 super-powered teenagers become quite useful, suddenly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thankyou so much to anyone who read, kudos or commented, it really made me want to get this next one out :)

2\. _Friends_.

It’s hard sometimes, for Wanda to lower her vigilance- which has grown to be something of a ten foot, impenetrable brick wall over half a life of constant threat. 

It’s hard to laugh and eat waffles in the kitchen with Tony, when she’s spent so much time devising intricate ways in which she’d exact her painful, messy revenge; she’s directed her own rotting, unceasing fury at the man for years, as Hydra amplified the image of the Stark bomb, over, and over, and  _over_ ...

It’s hard to hold Natasha’s gaze, when Wanda remembers so clearly the sensation of rifling through the woman’s carefully repressed trauma, and locking her in her own private version of hell with a fine wisp of scarlet. No matter how many times she’s told  _ it isn’t your fault ,  you were brain-washed _ , she can’t always ignore the little glimmer of fear that she knows remains in her teammates, no matter how small and insignificant it’s become. 

It’s hard to walk the crowded grounds of Xavier’s mansion, where everything is so stiflingly safe and  _normal_ \- when the thing she’s grown so accustomed to is something close to torture, and yet here her towels are folded and steamed every morning, even though she never stays longer than a night. 

Sometimes, the panic culminates and she gets torn between worlds- she’ll be whispering soft Sokovian words to Pietro as he sleeps, and all at once, her vision will flicker darkly. Shift. Glitch. One second, he’ll be dozing peacefully, and the next he’ll be white as a sheet- there’s blood on his face, and smeared on the walls, and he’s seizing, copper oozing out of him like water through a sieve and-

There’ll be a hand in her hair, and Wanda will jerk, violently shaking until the walls are rinsed clean, andPietro’s the one who’s awake, and holding her, and whispering, softly.

It’s especially hard to just  _forget_ , she thinks, because of all the other ties this place seems to have for Wanda. After all, her first interaction with any of these people was way back  when \- when, specifically being barely a week after the Sokovian bunker was blown away to snowy, senseless chunks of concrete, and both Wanda and Pietro were blinded by the white sky for the first time in five years. 

This part of her life- though far from the grief-stricken, bloody, shrieking years that came before- was tainted by a bitter, white-hot fury. It was an all encompassing state of constant anger: directed wholly at the Avengers. At her new  family . 

( “_Hello,” he said, with a smile, “I’m Charles. Some people call me Professor X.” Despite his lack of hair, he was audibly young, which was mildly puzzling- but Wanda couldn’t find any spare attention to pay to his unusual appearance, because she was enraptured by his mind..._

_Or lack thereof. _

_Normally, people were exceedingly noisy creatures. Their thoughts, to Wanda, buzzed around them like a swarm of bees, which shot at her like angry pellets whenever she got close. _

_This man, however, was so impossibly different. _

_Instead of a constant low buzz, where he sat, there was a gaping, alien hole in the sound. It followed him, as he wheeled down the street: a vast, empty chasm of silence that rang out louder than any indistinct noise. _

_Goosebumps sprang up across her arms. _

_Out of the Professor’s view, she grabbed onto Pietro’s sleeve, ready to be whipped away at incomprehensible speed. For a reason she couldn’t fathom, however, her brother seemed willing to listen for a second longer._

_“You’ve been following us,” Pietro had said, after a long, uncomfortable pause. Protective. Accusing. _

_Charles smiled, sheepishly. “I want to help both of you,” he said. Oh boy, was that the wrong script to pick..._

_Unfortunately for Charles, Strucker had promised them the exact same thing, around five years of human experimentation ago. Word for word. Verbatim. _

_At these sickeningly familiar words, her stomach flipped; beneath her fingertips, she felt Pietro’s muscles tense and lock. _

_The change in atmosphere was instant, and the man knew he was running out of words and patience. “There’s lots of other people like us,” he said quickly, noting the flash of static across Wanda’s face, like a nervous tick- “people with special... abilities.”_

_People who understand _

_ Wanda had flinched,  sparking like a blown fuse, and trembling ferociously with the indescribable sensation of her mind being drawn like curtains.  _

_The feeling of another telepath... it was indescribable. _

_She tugged Pietro’s sleeve with a semblance of urgency, now, but still they didn’t move. Dick. _

_“I can help you control that, if you’d like.”_

_Wanda had all but snarled. _

_“I have a school. It’s a safe place. I can offer you a home there. Protection.”_

_Finally, something clicked within Pietro, and his face twisted sourly. _

_“You’re recruiting?”_

_ “No! No- that’s not-“_

_They weren’t weapons, or soldiers to be forced into line. They sure as hell weren’t about to sell their lives to the latest terrorist that had sniffed them out like dogs. _

_Just like that, precious hope was snatched away, and they raced across the continent before he could say anything further...)_

Like everything, it’s complicated. But no matter how badly she might be affected, Wanda’s need to be close to her brother whilst he heals overrides any and all of her other selfish whims, and juvenile upset. 

He was hurt. 

Badly . 

(She can’t lose him, she can’t-  she _can’t_ ) 

It’s close to compulsive- her sitting at his bedside, from dusk until dawn- until either he personally kicks her out, or Clint starts getting worried, and blowing up Charles’ phone. 

Although Pietro was healed in means that were by no means traditional, his recovery is achingly so: he sleeps round the clock like a child, whilst his body recovers from the shock; he’s ordered to stay in bed; and he’s monitored persistently by machines, a plethora of wires, and the mansion’s healers doing their rounds. 

Past all of this, though- forgoing the obvious effects of an agonisingly slow recovery, for the fastest person alive-Wanda sees something else that only she could recognise within her brother. 

Pietro is in no immediate hurry to leave this place. The Med Wing is his prison obviously, but not the school, she doesn’t think. She’s heard how he speaks about the place. 

Which is... maybe it’s not so horrific as it seems, at first glance (she’ll divert more concern to that when once he’s awake long enough to interrogate him about the matter). She isn’t worrying. She  _isn’t_ . 

All it means, is that Wanda is going to have to spend a little more time than she’s comfortable with between the walls of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. 

God, she already misses the compound. 

If a month ago, Wanda took a step back- really studying her own headspace- and thought about the things which she’d inherently assume would unnerve her about this place, immediately the threat level would have sprung to mind. The raw, immense cumulation of unbridled power beneath this roof is  _incredible_ . It’s a formidable danger to Wanda, if push comes to shove. (“They’re twelve,  _varobushek_.  They can’t hurt you ...”)

But, for some senseless, unfathomable reason, her rigidly strict vigilance doesn’t choose to pick up on the very real danger that one hundred supremely powerful kids provide in a twist. 

Instead, proving once and for all that Wanda’s mind is an encrypted, messy place, she chooses to massively freak out about how freakishly normal they are. (Her towels are  _folded_ , and these girls all  _giggle_ in  _groups_ in the  hallway )

Living here, there are many teenage girls who would appear, at base level, incredibly similar to Wanda. Some have long, reddish hair. Tamer than hers, but wild eyes all the same. A few have eyeliner, not unlike her own dark, smudged (“Racoon,” says Pietro) application. 

Occasionally, she passes by them in the corridors: they’re uncomfortably close to her in age and physicality, and some possess quite powerful abilities. Sometimes, she wonders if she’d been born to different parents, perhaps, whether she might have turned out just like them- smiley, and bright, and shrieking with laughter as they use their powers like party tricks in the bathroom mirror; call their parents between meals and class, to complain about the workload, and how much the distance is killing them. 

As it is, the difference between herself, and the kids in this school is  _astounding_ . 

It sends her reeling sometimes, to see someone- someone like ‘Jubilee’ (Whose thoughts and friends are both very loud) - groaning about her Mom taking her little brother on summer vacation, but leaving her at home this year. In context, this might not be such a silly thing to complain about at all- but no matter how Wanda tries to put herself in Jubilee’s situation, she cannot begin to comprehend or justify such a fickle worry. 

Jubilee has a house, and food, and a mom. For a long time, all of that seemed like a distant dream, to Wanda. 

Every time she hears a kid talk to their friend about near enough anything, she feels as if an irrecoverable part of herself has been stolen away...  _Nothing_ that they speak about is anything she understands, which she’d let slide as lost in translation, if she wasn’t fluent in American English from the age of eleven. It isn’t the frustration of being forced to translate her thoughts, constantly, that causes such bother- it’s the startling realisation, as she listens in, of just how much of the outside world she’d forgotten. 

She listens to a fragment of conversation, and immediately she’s reminded of some forty other simple pleasures in life that she hadn’t even remembered existed, like video games, and group chats, and stupid little things like birthday parties. More often than she’d care to admit, hot, choking, suffocating panic builds up in her chest-because here she is so incredibly out of place. 

These kids haven’t seen  _anything_ . Not one has experienced anything in the realm of war, or witnessing traumatic deaths, or torture, or agony, or absolute, gripping terror. Most of them haven’t ever felt mild distress, not least being cut open on a table so Wolfvang Von Strucker can poke and prod at their insides until their minds  _snap_ . 

And yet, strangely enough- as jarring as this is, to Hydra’s prized weapon- the sheltered obliviousness has its merits. 

Because the Avengers are brilliant, of course, but when they talk to Wanda, they dance on eggshells. She’s wounded, in their eyes. Like a guilty puppy. 

She talks to Charles, sometimes, but he relays such an aura of importance that it’s like every conversation they have automatically achieves a sort of gravity from the outset, and her broken rambles, when she’s truly starved of company, feel as if they carry the weight of the world. 

Worst of all, when it’s quiet, Wanda is left alone, with a whole lot of cold, dark trauma to sit in. Not even a month ago, the last part of life that she cared for almost died in her arms. Her baby twin brothers heart stopped beating, and she  _felt_ the pulse sputter out. Twisted things like that- they don’t just disappear, when she blinks: it’s as if the image is burned, permanently, into her eyes. 

She needs, more than anything, to turn off. 

And Xavier’s students, as she’s established, know nothing. They truly are oblivious. 

They don’t know the things she’s done, to survive. They aren’t aware, in the slightest, of the things she’s seen, or the things she’s become. They don’t know to treat her any differently. 

Which means, despite everything... they offer an escape. 

One day, the walls grow too close. Wanda wakes up, and stumbles out of bed, but Pietro stays down- it isn’t unusual, per say, and it shouldn’t be concerning, but... it is. Bad memories are far too present for her liking, and the air in this medical hall is thick, like soup. 

And on that day, she meets Blink. 

She just needs a minute, to breathe fresh air. 

That relief just so happens to present itself in the form of a five foot four Asian girl, with incredible magenta hair, and eyes that burn an extraterrestrial green, like acid. 

Minutes after sitting down at an empty bench, in the grounds, she’s joined by a brand new breed of company, who wears her shocking pink hair back in an oriental braid.It’s close to startling, at first, but then she starts to speak, and any lingering fear is washed away instantly. 

“Hey!” She says, smiling brightly, as she jumps onto the bench like a frog. “Are you new here?”

Beneath her entrancing eyes, she has intricate markings, that twine and twist over one another like the shadow of dark purple roses. There’s another mark, between her eyebrows, and an etching just above them, too. 

“Sort of,” Wanda says, returning the smile, and trying hard to stifle her thick accent. Which doesn’t work in the slightest, of course- but she needn’t worry at all. 

In an impossible feat, the girls eyes seem to brighten in intensity. 

“Cool!It’s lovely to meet you! My parents called me Clarice, but everyone here calls me Blink.”

“I’m Wanda...”

And then, after a second’s hesitation later, 

“I think they call me The Witch.”

“That is awesome!”

If rainbows had a face, Wanda thinks, they’d look like Blink. 

“Does that mean you have some magical, witchy power, then?” She asks, harmlessly, in her exceedingly warm and chirpy voice. 

_ **I don’t know. What about you?** _

Blink’s jaw drops. 

“You’re just like the Professor!” She exclaims, eyes wide, as if that’s the highest honour she can bestow. 

Wanda smiles down at her plate. 

“I guess so,” she says, feeling scarlet nudge impatiently at her fingertips. On some kiddish impulse, she curls her palm, and her fork floats all the way up to her mouth, where she takes a small bite of potato. 

Blink all but squeaks with excitement, and Wanda feels her crimson crackle and purr at the praise like an overly smug Tom cat. “Telekinesis too!  _And_ psionics!”

“What about you?” She says, because she’s really shown off far more than she ever should have, but Blink just shakes her head, shyly. 

“Nothing half as cool as that!”

Wanda squints her brow, as if she doesn’t quite believe the girl. Which, of course, is true- she can  sense the powerful energy radiating from Clarice Ferguson, after all. 

“Well... I’m called Blink because of the sound,” she admits, almost sheepishly- “but I’ve been working on that...”

Without further stammering, Wanda watches intently as Blink extends her palm, and waves it in the form of a circle- orchestrating a movement not dissimilar to the way Wanda uses her scarlet to create shields of energy. Instead of a bloom of bright crimson static, however, when Blink splays her palm, a brilliant, pulsing purple bead materialises. 

In a flash of magenta, the bead spirals outwards, shimmering and rippling like the air around it, until-

There’s a hole in the universe, next to Blink’s face. 

Wanda gasps in awe, which elicits a giggle, and then Blink’s twisting her other palm, and suddenly there’s another tear in space, materialised right by Wanda’s plate. 

In one swift movement, Blink sticks her hand through the first portal, and simultaneously, a glittery manicured, dismembered hand materialises across the bench top . The hand is snatched back, with Blink pulling her hand out of the original portal, and she’s triumphantly wielding a stolen French fry like a trophy. 

Holy  _shit_ . 

“Holy shit!”

Blink giggles again, and then snaps her palms shut, and sure enough, the portals fold in with what can only be described as a faint, chiming  _blink_ . 

“That’s awesome!” Wanda exclaims, “Can everyone else do things like that?” She knows they’re powerful, obviously, but after seeing what Blink can do...

It’s fascinating. 

“Everyone’s different, I think,” she says, “But some types of powers are more common than others...”

They talk for a while- the longest Wanda thinks she’s talked, since, well...  _forever_\-  Blink telling her all about this place, and the people here, through her aggressively optimistic filter. 

She talks freely about her ‘mutation’, and the unnaturally vibrant marks and colourings she’d been born with, which immediately signified her as a mutant. There were lots of them, whose appearances were physically altered: some people’s skin turned to metal, or fused as rock; some sprouted enormous wings beneath their shoulder blades; and some, like her, were simply born looking different- with bright skin, or eyes, or hair. 

In a burst of short-lived confidence, Wanda asks about the school. They stay there all term, Blink says, like a boarding school- they have some of the ‘regular’ lessons, and then other times it’s training, learning to control their freaky powers, so they can safely assume their place in the world. 

They don’t digress into the politics of it all, which Wanda is glad for. She’s spent half her life running from a discriminatory government as a Jew- she isn’t going to spend the rest worrying about the regard of mutants in society. Besides- she’s an avenger, now. Pepper Potts can press conference her way out of anything and everything that’s said against Wanda. 

She can hardly believe it, but speaking to Blink- to this innocent, harmless child- it’s  _fun_ . They laugh, in a way the muscles in her face have never had reason to strain before, and they talk and talk and talk: everything turned happy and bright, by the way Blink manages to spin it... 

It’s hard sometimes, for Wanda to lower her vigilance, but for a couple of hours, she actually manages it.

Maybe, she thinks, just  _maybe_ , she can gain back some of that childhood that everyone’s telling her about. 

—————————————————————

“What’s wrong with  _you_ ?” Pietro cries, when she returns to the Med Wing, and Wanda almost flinches. Has she really been out that long? Has she abandoned him, whilst he’s been stuck in his bed, alone?

He hasn’t been entirely himself since Novi Grad (His exhausted body has been recovering from the damage of twenty-two separate bullet wounds, after all) - but he sure as hell hasn’t been anything like  _this_ . 

Breathing a little harder than before, she sits forward, trying to ease her frown. She can’t hide how much his words have hurt her. 

“What do you mean,  _bystryy_ ?” She whispers, tentatively. 

“That thing-“ he says, gesturing, and she feels as if she’s been dunked in ice water- “That  _thing_ you’re doing with your face!”

What- what on Earth is he talking about? What kind of pain meds have they stuck him on? Is he-

_Oh_ , what a dick. 

“Is it a smile?” Pietro gasps in horror, his eyes widened “Is Wanda Maximoff smiling?”

Wanda Maximoff flicks his ear sharply, and then Wanda Maximoff is  _grinning_ . 

—————————————————————

It’s somewhat of a regular thing, now: Pietro falls asleep, and Wanda wanders down to the student grounds, attempting the tiniest part of that thing those strange Americans call socialising. 

Whether she’s stuck in a bad memory day, or she’s struggling to keep everyone’s blaring voices out of her goddamn skull, Blink is always waiting with a smile, and some other new, flashy trick to distract Wanda for the best part of the morning. It’s refreshing. It’s her lifeline, in this place. 

And then, in a feat just short of a miracle, some other friendly girls start to speak to her when they pass in the halls, or she sits down to eat. In fact, Wanda has a whole, startling list of people who are just plain  _nice_ to her. 

There’s Storm (or Ororo), who turns out to be just as headstrong as her name. Lightning leaps from her fingertips, and her eyes roll back to a shocking white, like her hair- and despite all of this, she’s the calmest, most rational person in this place, Wanda thinks. She’s also scarily good at Black Jack, which is a card game that she carefully explains to Wanda, one day. (She pays special attention, so that she can challenge Clint and Sam, when she gets back. They seem like they type of men who appreciate a good game of cards.)

There’s Kitty, who thankfully isn’t often referred to as her alias- which is freaking  _Shadowcat_ , and more than a little intense, for use in casual conversation. It’s intrinsically easy to tell that she’s very smart, like Storm, but she practically jitters with excited energy, and she’s just as chirpy as Blink. Plus, she can phase through  _walls_ . No biggie. 

There’s another girl too, who Wanda has known about ever since she crashed through Erik’s window, all ablaze. It’s impossible to ignore her presence, when it’s so significant...

Jean, like Charles, and like Wanda, is a telepath. And she’s an enigma. 

She’s an inferno of sunburst red hair, and shocking steel eyes; flowing in her blood, Wanda can tell, there’s power enough to level all of these other kids combined. Despite this, Jean Grey is most probably the quietest, meekest kid on the team. She’s an intricate puzzle. She’s frighteningly similar to Wanda.

Which makes for a brilliant opposition, when Blink drags her along to ‘training’ (Which she learns quite quickly is an hour allocated solely to letting off steam in the form of energy blasts, and ice beams, and thunderstorms.)

It’s as if she’s fallen heavily asleep, and she’s been inserted in some ditzy, neon-lit American dream, where she does fantastically pointless things like joking, and cloud gazing. Where she’s surrounded by a gaggle of soft girls, who badly braid each other’s hair with wild flowers from the grass, and then throw clumps of daisies at one another when they argue; where there’s boy drama, and girl drama; where they recreate dramatic movie scenes with their world-ending mutant capabilities, instead of trying to make people hurt.

Its escapism, alright. But it’s temporary bliss.

She’ll go back to fighting the forces of evil alongside her definitively messed up, rag-tag team as soon as she can, and she’ll inevitably relapse back into dark, twisty, broody Wanda- but while she’s stuck here, she’s gonna let herself be a kid for just a little while longer.

To Hydra, Strucker, and Ultron, it’s the biggest middle finger she can give. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope yall like this one, and I hope my absolute lack of substantial X-men knowledge isn’t too distressing! 
> 
> I mean I read about Blink and fell in love with her powers, but her personality isn’t really explored in depth anywhere so I literally bullshitted her entire character. If you know better, I’m so so sorry 
> 
> As always, thanks to Herecomesthesun! I’m loving writing this, and I hope you’re enjoying reading whatever it turns in to :). 
> 
> Comment anything ya like, or would like to see...  
<3 <3


	3. III: Of trauma and telepathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let me help you, then. We can make sure that you don’t have to go through that, ever again.”
> 
> She slumps back down into her chair, and tries to avoid the sincerity of his gaze.
> 
> “I know how it feels to be telepathic, you know. Jean knows. You aren’t alone in this, Wanda.”
> 
> “I know.”
> 
> “Then let me help you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was gonna post this but then I fell asleep for four months

3\. _Telepathy_

Calm isn’t a word that Wanda uses very often at all, in correlation to her own state of affairs: she’s a  _Hydra-child-soldier_ turned  _supremely-powerful-teenage-witch_ turned  _Avenger_ , which tends to translate accurately to  _ nervous wreck .  _

Lately, however, something quite massive has shifted out of its careful place in the universe- some clumsy celestial being has consumed one too many celestial beverages, drunkenly fallen over a celestial flower pot, and knocked loose a proverbial celestial screw in the fabric of reality.

Because, for a frankly miraculous, unprecedented stretch, the widespread, toxic electrical fire that is Wanda’s life has settled into something ... _stable_.  One might even dare to say  peaceful , if one was blind, and unaware of the concept of jinxing good fortune .  Wanda has a routine, for God’s sake- and it can’t be further from the last ‘shocked awake, force fed, experimented upon, punished, reminded of the enemy, fall unconscious due to absolute exhaustion’ that she followed compulsively.

Monday through Friday, she wakes up either at 8 (If she can convince herself) or 11 (If she’s being realistic). All day, she rotates between training with Nat, either in hand to hand, or refining her linguistics and spy training; joining the entire team in combat simulation down in the gym; working alongside Tony, who best understands the concept of her magic and least gives a shit about her blowing things up; or then relaxing, and remembering how it is to have a family.

On the odd occasion, Fury presents a mission, and on the even odder occasions, the heavy hitters like Wanda and Vision are required on the field. In a truly exciting turn of events, sometimes there’s an emergency alert- and then they all scramble to the door like half-dressed sleep-ridden firefighters. Here, she puts all of her hard work to use, and painfully squashes as many Hydra associates as she can whilst she’s at it.

When she has time, she calls Pietro, and he’s over before the receiver can sound. These snapshots make up some of her all time favourite memories: the entire team plus her brother sprawled all over the living room with a heap of Thai food, shrieking with laughter as Pietro gradually manages to reduce Clint to silent exasperation. He’s going to end up with an arrow stuck in his thigh any day now, Sam says. Wanda thinks it’s a love-hate relationship.

On the weekends, she’s whisked away North to Hudson Valley, and her world becomes just that bit more fantastical. She speaks to Blink, and Kitty and Ororo; she has one-sided mental conversations with an inattentive Jean, and she glares at Erik, just because he glares back. They’re Pietro’s people, so she makes conscious effort to embarrass him, too.

Obviously, something has to blow up spectacularly, in order to restore balance to the world.

But why, why on  _Earth_, does it have to be her telepathy?

Can’t it be the regular issues ruining her life, like great emotional trauma? Wanda’s quite good at handling that one, she’ll admit. It’s a skill that comes with experience.

Unfortunately, when shit goes sideways with the no-good freaky mind abilities, shit goes  _sideways_. With the help of her team, and, of course, her fellow mutants, Wanda’s learned to carefully manipulate her telekinesis, and her psionics: most of the time, it’s easy to keep the scarlet under incredibly tight control. The telepathy, however...

The noise begins on an unassuming Wednesday.

The noise doesn’t end.

It’s not like Wanda has never experienced days like this- the art of being connected to minds is a notoriously unstable business, one that requires much refining- but it becomes clear very quickly that the situation isn’t drawing to a close. Loud days- where no matter how hard Wanda tries, she can’t block out the thoughts of others- they normally occur like bad dreams. For a stretch of hours, the mechanism reverses, and the voices come to Wanda, without her seeking them. And then it’s over, in a blink.

This time, however, it only gets worse.

Wanda’s issue hits a peak one simple mid-morning, whilst she’s shovelling spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth...

Everyone is lounging around in a lethargic trance: the boys have resumed their natural state, and are sprawled across the living area; Natasha, ever the intellectual, is staring down the pages of a book (though, she hasn’t turned a page the entire while she’s been in the room- and Wanda’s beginning to suspect that the woman has learned to sleep with her eyes wide open).

“Is Wanda going to Xavier’s today?” Clint airs absentmindedly, or least, she thinks he does.

“Yeah, Wanda is,” confirms Wanda herself, through a face full of cornflakes. 

For the very mild response she’s given, Clint jerks violently upright, so suddenly that he almost falls off of the sofa. The others all appear very confused- even Tony, who’s allergic to public displays of uncertainty, is looking at her like she’s declared that she’s running for presidency. 

“I didn’t like that!” Clint yelps, hanging on to Sam’s arm. Sam looks mildly disgusted. “It was so  cool- but I did  _not_ like that!”

Wanda just stares, blankly. 

What exactly is she being accused of, again?

“He didn’t say anything,” Nat offers, when her face is still screwed up after another thirty seconds. 

“But-“

“Not out loud, anyway.”

She  heard him, though- loud and clear- definitely Clint’s voice-

Oh. 

Natasha’s right: it hadn’t been out loud. It had been entirely in his head. It was a thought. 

Wanda is mortified. 

“I’m sorry!” She splutters, cheeks tinged pink. How hadn’t she realised? “I’m really sorry!”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Clint dismisses, grinning, and almost immediately he starts wrestling Sam for the tv remote. 

There’s something else there, though. Wanda can see it. Wanda can  _hear_ it, and she can’t shut it out.

Does she hear everything? _Can she hear this? Barton get off me _ **Oh I forgot about that** Is she always listening? I don’t want her in my head

She flinches. 

It isn’t the staggering volume of noise overloading Wanda’s mind that worries her, because she knows where Tony keeps the pain meds. It’s the realisation. The dread of knowing that she can no longer distinguish between a spoken word, and the private drabbles of the subconscious. That she isn’t managing to filter out any of the input, that was never meant for her ears. 

She’s lost control. 

From there, it’s a slow descent to insanity. 

“ Anyone know what time it is? ”  Asks an outgoing New-Yorker, in the line at the coffee shop .  It takes her close to two minutes of intense concentration, hands wrapped exasperatedly around her face, to decide that the voice- amongst the thunderous bustling of another million citizens- is external. 

“2:45,” she offers, politely. Her careful decision is met with stares that would also be appropriate if she’d decided to take off all of her clothes, in line to pick up her frappés. 

She stares at her boots until the shoelaces smoke, and pretends like nothing happened at all. 

A few days later, Wanda’s sat cross-legged on her rug, as if attempting to summon some otherworldly spirit. With all of her will, she tries desperately to tune them out: Sam, Clint, Natasha and Tony and Steve- because if her powers become a force that drives them away, she’ll tear the damn scarlet from her veins. 

Her face contorts, twists with the immense strain of tearing through presence after presence to single them out, but it’s impossible, with the furious internal ramblings of Karen in accounting screeching in her ear. There’s a constant, pounding ache at the forefront of her skull that boils as she struggles against the tides, and her eyes begin to burn with the frustration of it all. 

They don’t want her in their minds, but she can’t get out. 

She’s trying so goddamn hard. 

“Hey!” Wanda jests next Saturday, when she catches Blink’s cheeky offhand remark about the way she’s  _certain_ Kurt looks at her in the corridors. “He does not!” 

The mansion is located in the middle of a rather isolated scope of hills, and it’s only the thoughts of three hundred students that plague her today. It’s an incredible relief, compared to the agony of living in the centre of New York City, and she’s almost managed to forget about it all. 

The girl turns, empty plate in hand. 

“Huh?”

“You can’t say that. Legally. I have attachment issues.”

“Say... what?” Blinks beaming smile has faltered, and her brow is now creased in such confusion that the delicate etchings of her forehead are lost in a frown.

“You didn’t.. You didn’t say anything?”

Her striking eyes blink, slowly. 

“Just then?” 

“No...”

“About  _Kurt?_ ” Wanda presses. 

With a snap, Blinks eyes widen. “What did you hear?” 

“About Kurt,” she mumbles, her voice becoming so small that Blink leans forwards, squinting, to try and catch her words. “You said he looks at me. Or something.”

“No  _way!_ ” The acid green of her eyes leaps from her face, alight with shining excitement. “I didn’t say that!” She squeals, with the air of one who’s just won the lottery jackpot. 

Frowning, Wanda pushes her thick hair behind her ears.“What do you mean?”

“I  _thought_ it!”

There’s a sharp moment of static- and then Blink bursts into uncontrollable laughter: whooping, wheezing laughter that leaves her clutching her stomach. 

“The look on your face!”

“It’s not funny!” Wanda cries, her scowl faltering disobediently. 

“Oh it is,” Blink gasps. “This could be  _such_ a fun game!” 

“Don’t you dare!” 

Besides them, Ororo sends her friend a look that drips with uncertainty. 

Wanda doesn’t miss it. 

Since Miss Potts’ press conference, walking freely in public areas has become decidedly more complicated. Steve is blindly convinced that if she stops ‘ _dressing like a damn witch_’ for ten minutes, she’ll never be recognised as one.At this, Wanda takes a good look at his impeccable disguise, for inspiration- but it’s missing, and instead there’s a seven foot tall wall of solid muscle with his baseball cap perched atop his combover.

Huh. He’s right: it’s definitely her black mini dresses that draw them a crowd. 

Either way, it’s hardly as if they’re defenceless. After all, they’re  Avengers , not actresses pouting on the front of a Cosmopolitan issue. 

“Wanda?” Calls a tinkly voice, when she’s at the mall with Pietro, flicking bits of paper straws across the table; she half expects to turn and find Captain America, reprimanding her for making a mess. Pietro grins, and smiles back at him, dementedly enough that her eyes flash scarlet in warning. She doesn’t normally get recognised when she’s with her average-sized brother, but now something tugs at her sleeve, and she swiftly whirls around on her spinning plastic stool.

There’s a little girl, stood in front of her. It catches Wanda off guard. 

“Woah,” says the kid, and Wanda agrees. Her eyes are like saucers; there are freckles sprinkled about her round cheeks like scattered constellations, and her hair is stubbornly curly, like Wanda’s used to be. 

She smiles politely, and she can almost see the stars shimmering in the little girls eyes.

“Hi,” she whispers, pulling at her cardigan sleeves, and Wanda’s insides don’t melt. Honest. It’s just... this kid isn’t slimy, like most of them. She’s kinda... cute. In a gremlin type of fashion.

_Admit it_ , Pietro thinks, loudly enough for the intent to be obvious.  _You want one_.

_ **Shut up** _

“Um.. hey.”

The girl’s little smile beams, despite Wanda’s uncertainty. 

“Hiya! My names Ellie!”

_She’s adorable_.

“I love your shirt, Ellie!” Pietro calls, leaning over the table as if he’s getting a closer look. Sure enough, there’s a rainbow of symbols for all of the Avengers: a little purple arrow, for Clint; a spider, a hammer, an arc reactor, a shield, a nuclear green fist for Bruce, and then- there’s a little red flare of energy, in the corner.  _Oh_ . 

“Thanks!” She says, beaming with pride, and then her shyness seems to return as she looks up at Wanda, twisting her tiny fists. “You’re my favourite Avenger.”

Wanda blinks. 

She blinks some more. 

_Are you broken?_

She kicks his shin fiercely, under the table. 

“Ellie!” Comes a voice then, and a mildly frantic man appears, clutching a unicorn rucksack that doesn’t appear to be his style. “Hey!” He reprimands, “Leave them alone!”

“She’s alright,” assures Pietro, smiling, “We were just talking about how  _I’m_ Ellie’s favourite Avenger.”

At this, the little girl gasps indignantly. Wanda suppresses a chuckle. “You’re not!” She says, without any hesitation, and Pietro slaps a hand over his heart. He sniffs, feigning tears, and Ellie giggles. 

Wanda  _likes_ this kid. 

“You can be my favourite X-Men, if you want?” She offers, and Pietro lifts his head out of his hands. 

“Really?” 

She nods. 

Wanda’s going to cut in with a joke, but then she catches a prominent voice, that’s bitterly cold.

_ How can she understand them? Cheap, lazy immigrants. Why’s Stark got people like them lying around? _

Slowly, she looks down at Ellie, and then looks back up at her dad. All of a sudden, she finds herself breathless.

_ They look the part too. Freaks. _

For all of the resentment that he’s apparently harbouring, the man looks only mildly uncomfortable. When Pietro goes to shake the little girls hand, however, he snatches his daughter backwards.

“It was nice meeting you,” continues Pietro, unperturbed, even though his arm’s hanging aimlessly in the air. Ellie’s father wraps an arm around her.

_Thieving foreigners_, he thinks, and Wanda is simply taken aback. _Listen to them speak. It’s unlawful._

“_Excuse_ me?”

The mans eyes fall upon Wanda; exactly the same shade as his daughter’s, but lacking any similar sense of warmth. Momentarily, they hover upon the pendant that hangs around her neck, but they’re clouded in confusion.

“Who are you calling a thief?” Wanda spits, with a murderous glare.

All of the blood drains from his face, in a fascinating display of contrasting shades. Swiftly, he shoves Ellie behind him, out of view, and glares at Wanda in livid repulsion- as if he’s just witnessed her setting fire to his home.

“How did you do that?” He asks. He’s called Marcus. Marcus trembles, and his eye twitches slightly.

“We are not  _thieves_ .”

“I never said you were!” He exclaims, but then, in an impossible feat, his expression grows paler still. The realisation drops. 

“You were in my mind,” says Marcus. 

And then he strides forward, in the same moment that her brother appears at her side, in a threatening crackle of static. 

“Sir,” orders Pietro. “Move away.”

“She was, wasn’t she?” The man’s fury spills over his features now: his face morphs with anger, and his sharp little eyes send gleaming daggers. “You nasty little  _bitch!_”

With a sudden crunch, Pietro’s fist makes contact. 

Marcus hits the floor. 

In one terrible instant, the noise swells: enormous, vicious, and searing- directed from all angles, from every fathomable direction- and then the world disappears, with a firm grip around her shoulders, blue static, and the lingering grease of french fries long turned cold. 

_ // “Brooklyn is left in shock today, as news breaks of a horrific assault upon a member of the public.  _

_Just this afternoon, a shopper was attacked in broad daylight, by, as witnesses claim, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff- the twins who came to join such well-regarded superhero organisations such as the Avengers and the X-Men. _

_ This spurs the often-debated question: should we be allowing people like this- unpredictable people with uncontrollable powers and abilities- to roam our streets?” // _

Wanda wonders what it is that’s she’s done, to deserve torment like this. Why did she survive the cruel experiments of the mind stone? What sin is she paying the price for, with the burden of these damn torturous powers?

Aside her, the team are silent. 

“_Screw_ him,” declares Clint, glaring at the television screen as if he’s currently figuring out how best to exact his revenge. 

She doesn’t hear him. She can’t. 

She only hears them. 

Lock them up , they think, all across the city.  _Murderers_ _,_ they spit,  _ **mutants** _ and _no-goods_ and  _ **criminals** _ and it’s so impossibly, agonisingly loud, and her skull’s going to crack, and  _lock them up_ ,  _they deserve it,_ **_ lock them up_-**

With a wild crackle of scarlet, the door swings open, and Wanda marches in with only the  slightest of reservations. A chorus of screeching- of chair legs grinding against parquet- and five pairs of bright, gawking eyes meet Wanda’s glare. 

Only when the great wooden doors slam closed from behind, do these stares break their hold. The inquisitive children to which they belong to are... they’re  _young_ . Childlike. Unnervingly so- and from the shades of horror sprawled over their five faces it’s entirely possible that she’s traumatised them. 

_Witch?_ Innocently chirps one mind, after barely a second of blissfully silent surprise.  _**Witch?** Scarlet Witch?_ Asks another then, blindly curious. 

Wanda watches indifferently, as their faces begin to shift. As the stones begin to loosen. In fact, there’s only a half of a moment to breathe before the avalanche itself descends, and then it smashes into her with the familiar force of a two-ton truck: an unceasing stream of incomprehensible noise, of Something wrong? and Scarlet Witch? and Something happening?

Her jaw cracks, as she stiffens. 

_ Is there an attack? Does the a professor know?  **Is someone hurt?** Is that the witch?  Is she still here? Is something wrong? Is she dangerous?  _

“Make it _stop_,” Wanda growls through gritted teeth, stood brittle-straight in the doorway, both hands clamped around her skull like vices. It hurts. It hurts, like the rubble, and the arrow, and the brain-melting pain. 

_ Danger?  **Danger? ** _

_Is she possessed?_

To Charles’ everlasting credit, the room is cleared in moments. The insulting teenagers in his classroom are dismissed with no more than the knack of a few soft words, and then he’s moving round the desk, and he’s two feet away, and his hand is reaching out. 

She flinches away from his touch. Her head throbs. 

“Hey,” Charles says- so softly that the words are almost drowned entirely; dragged beneath the raging chaos of a million minds. “Please let me help you.” He doesn’t know what’s wrong. She doesn’t know how to admit this to him.

It hurts. 

“Make it stop,” she whispers, and the question falls away from Charles’ lips. She isn’t asking, or demanding- she’s begging. 

_Pathetic_ , reprimands the little voice in her head, in a sing-song manner. It doesn’t matter. It’s just more noise. 

Tentatively, his hand moves towards her temple. She’s trembling, violently, but she moves desperately into the touch- and the contact is like ice. 

Cool, soothing ice. 

And then, for the first time in weeks... 

Silence . 

It’s overwhelmingly euphoric, the blissful absence of noise. Right there, right then- she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to describe the ecstasy of the pressure dissipating to nothingness, and the endless shrieks falling away to subtle bird song, in the distance. 

All of her distress seeps away, and Wanda deflates. She closes her eyes, and relishes in the moment, just for a second. When she opens them, Charles’ expression of horror punctures a gaping hole in her perfect, heavenly experience. 

His chest is heaving, and a sheen of exertion shines upon his forehead. For a second, all he can do is stare. 

“How,” he begins, pausing to swallow, and drag in a breathe, “did you let it get  _that_ bad?” 

Wanda is floating, amongst the clouds. There are three hundred kids here, and she can’t hear the thoughts of  _any_ of them. She shrugs, but Charles shakes his head, intent on dragging her back down to the ground. 

“That- that was- I have  _never_ felt anything like that!” 

She looks at him nonchalantly, and his jaw slackens in exasperation. If Wanda could hear his thoughts, she knew she’d understand that this is a battle he’s fought all too many times before- that one subtle implication that  _things have been worse. _

“Thankyou,” Wanda says. 

Uncharacteristically, she can’t find it within herself to mind at all that the list of things she owes Charles seems to be growing longer everyday- because, has she mentioned, for the first time in two weeks she can only hear her own damn thoughts! No one else’s! Only the familiarly simple, barely coherent, nihilistic productions of her own lovely brain, bouncing about in there.  It’s bliss . 

Grinning despite herself, Wanda makes to scramble to her feet- but Charles cuts in before she can properly think about making her escape. 

“You can’t just- you can’t simply act as if nothing ever happened, Wanda.”

_Watch me_ _,_ Wanda thinks. She does not however, say this aloud, because she doesn’t want to partake in X-Men group therapy. Her compliance seems to irk him.

“That amount of input, it was horrible!” He exclaims, “I cannot begin to imagine living with that for any amount of time!”

“It wasn’t fun,” she offers.

“Let me help you, then. We can make sure that you don’t have to go through that, ever again.”

She slumps back down into her chair, and tries to avoid the sincerity of his gaze.

“I know how it feels to be telepathic, you know. Jean knows. You aren’t alone in this, Wanda.”

“I know.”

“Then let me help you.”

When Wanda doesn’t directly protest his offer, Xavier decides to take her stubborn silence for an agreement.

“You can tune the thoughts out,” he says, gesturing, “like a radio station, that you’d rather not listen to.”

“I’ve tried. It didn’t work.”

It never worked- not on the loud days, no matter how hard she concentrated. 

“Well of course it didn’t-“

She very nearly snaps at this, all of her repressed frustration biting at his smiling certainty- as if he knows the secret, and she’s simply too stupid to figure it out. He’s almost ruined her ecstatic mood. She doesn’t though. She’d call that character growth. 

“- because it takes  _time_ . ”

Her face twists, and Charles chuckles fondly. He’s recovered, from his brief encounter with her spiralling loss of control. “You know, I think impatience rather runs in the family.”

There’s a strange sort of moment between them, where neither move to speak. The points he’s making aren’t... invalid, as such, it’s just...  It’s annoying that she has to bother listening to him in the first place. 

“You’re wondering why the others seem to have everything under control?”

If Wanda didn’t know better, she’d accuse him of reading her mind. Somehow, it’s even more frustrating that she  _knows_ he hasn’t.

“It’s just- I wasn’t born with these stupid powers, and-“

“ _Exactly_ .”

Huh?

“Not all of us are,” he expands, “I believe your mutation was unlocked either with age, or perhaps the stone, or... the  stress, of your situation.”

Unlocked, not  created , he chooses, and its not a choice that slips past her.

“So it only stands to reason that it’s harder for you to control your powers, Wanda, than any of the others. As we’ve just mentioned, you’ve barely had the tail end of a year to safely learn to harness your abilities- whereas I’ve been this way since birth.”

“Pietro doesn’t have trouble!” She interjects. “I’ve seen kids develop new powers everyday in this place, and they never storm your office because they just can’t handle them anymore!”

“Your powers are incomparable to one another, Wanda!”

She swallows; he gestures wildly, eyes gleaming.

“For better example, take... Jean. She’s been telepathic since the age of ten, telekinetic since 13. If you ask her, you’ll discover there are plenty of instances where she struggles to reign in her powers- where she cannot simply tune out the voices, and everything gets too loud!

There are many days where I myself struggle, even though I’ve been training for longer than you’ve been alive, never-mind been in possession of your abilities!”

After a second, he sits back.

“You are stronger than you know,” he says, quietly. “Stronger than anyone can know, I believe.”

Her heart is racing, a mile a minute; at her fingertips, the scarlet thrums, purring with Xavier’s praise. With less than a second of hesitation, she knows, she could reduce the man before her- arguably the most powerful mutant on earth- to a pile of sizzling, useless bones. It’s a lot to shoulder.

“Like a radio station?” She asks, when a moment passes. Charles looks up in surprise.

“Yeah. Exactly like a radio station.”

“Why don’t you start by- trying to envisioning a wall. Build it up, like a barricade around your mind.”

Maybe, just this once, she thinks- as the birds sing sweetly in the distance, and she tries to ignore the pressing memories of the mall, and the city- maybe, this time, she’ll listen...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!!!! I’m so sorry it’s been so long on this fic, but look at us thriving in 2020!! HereComesTheSun, I’m sorry for the wait, but I hope u still enjoy this :) I had a lot of fun writing this in the end, and I’m excited to write the next bit! (Genuinely. No promises on a deadline tho;) ) 
> 
> as always I’m sorry for people who know more about X-Men than me bc this is allllll bullshit hahaha. Creative license, amirite?
> 
> Thank u so much for reading, I hope u enjoyed! Let me know what you liked, what ya didn’t, what you’d want to see <3 My tumblr is @SpellsofScarlet and I love to talk and I sometimes draw okay Thankyou!! :)


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